For the second year in a row, we went to Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center (BCC) the weekend of August 9-11, 2013. We managed to catch the world premier of Shinichiro Watanabe’s newest series, Space Dandy. Watanabe is famous for a number of titles, including Cowboy Bebop, and his most recent work, Kids on the Slope. The first Q&A turned into a series of panels with Sunrise Inc, Bandai Entertainment, and Funimation. The result was a more in depth look at Director Watanabe’s work, both past and present, with details below from Otakon 2013.
Director Shinichiro Watanabe
Director Shinichiro Watanabe explained that the biggest influence on his work wasn’t Hollywood, but American films from the 1970’s. These included Dirty Harry, Wild Bunch, Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and the Ballad of Cable Hogue. Director Don Siegle, and John Carpenter movies such as Dark Star were a heavy influence on his newest series, Space Dandy, which had its world premier Saturday, August 10, 2013 at Otakon 2013. One anime series that had a great impact on his directing style was Lupin the Third, the first TV Series.
He stressed that veterans of anime feel it is important to develop and nurture young staff. Some younger staff have never seen the movies that heavily influenced his work. They make young staff watch movies like John Carpenter’s Dark Star and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He uses influences from outside of anime for inspiration to create original anime series. He also indicated that if he had an opportunity to direct a live-action movie, he would be interested!
Watanabe mentioned that much of the blending of Western and Japanese art and motifs was unconscious and sourced from growing up in an era when he could easily access art and films from other countries.
Watanabe reviewed his career in anime starting in the 1980’s as a production manager. He explained that the production manager’s job is to call the artists and tell them to finish their work on time and then drive the car that delivers the work. He then worked as an episode director, whose job is to closely direct every detail in a single episode of anime. After that, he became a director for Macross Plus and a solo director on Cowboy Bebop.
On his role as a musical director, he noted that on many of the past series where he had a role as a director, he was also working on directing the music. He has been tapped to direct music for anime that he is not directing. In those cases, he makes sure to respect and accept the director’s input on content and try to improve [the presentation of] that content through the music.
On developing new series, Director Watanabe said that he starts with a single character, and sees that character until it is very life-like. He even said that he sometimes feels like the characters are hanging around with him at home. Then he develops a story around that character. For Cowboy Bebop, he started with Spike and developed his attributes. He told his staff that he wanted to make a series that would last 10, 20, or even 30 years. They laughed at him for this ambition, as anime never last that long.
Director Watanabe indicated that many parts of Morocco were an inspiration for the set of Cowboy Bebop, and Rio De Janeiro was an inspiration for up-coming work.
Music
On collaboration with Yoko Kanno, Watanabe wanted to make a note that she does not compose music exactly the way he tells her to. She is inspired on her own, blows up the image of the character independently, and then comes and presents the music for this character. “I would listen to her music, and then I would create new scenes. She would be inspired by those scenes, and then create more music…It was a game of cat between the two of us.”
For Cowboy Bebop, the songs for the second half of the series hadn’t been requested from her, but she made them and brought them to Watanabe, and they were a big hit. Watanabe said that it is usually “unforgivable” for a musician to submit unrequested work for a series, but in this case, it worked.
Director Watanabe explained that he did not like anime that never showed realistic performances . That is why he insisted on having a drummer on the set of Kids on the Slope. All of his production staff said “No way!”, but he insisted. He added that animating a performance scene is extremely work intensive. He wanted it to look very real, often at the cost of an enormous amount of work for the animators. Now he knows why no one else produces realistic performance scenes in their anime.
Space Dandy
Director Watanabe described the hero of his newest series, Space Dandy, as an individual with no worries. He compared usual dramas as following the trials and tribulations of the main character and his/her worries. But Watanabe described Dandy as operating on the scale of the universe, so he doesn’t have to worry about small things. Space Dandy is designed to be a comedic anime series.
Cowboy Bebop fans wanted more of Cowboy Andy. While they could not use Cowboy Andy in the Space Dandy series because of copyright issues, Director Watanabe decided to make some episodes of Space Dandy along the lines of what one would expect from a scene with Cowboy Andy. See the original artwork kindly provided by Bandai Visual Co. Ltd.
On the musical approach to Space Dandy, Director Watanabe elaborated that there will be about 20 different artists working on the series. This is an unusual approach. They asked each musician or group to create 3-4 songs for the series. All the musicians contributing to the series are very well-liked by Director Watanabe and popular. In order to assure there is cohesion to the music created by so many different artists, Director Watanabe requests the musicians to make music in a certain style. The only restriction he gave them was not to use instruments created after 1984, so that the music of the series has an old-school sound to it.
On the design of the series, Director Watanabe explained that each episode has a different style because each episode will take Dandy to a different planet. He explained that in order to get the best artists and designers to contribute to the series, it was easier to ask them to work on just one episode, since they are all very busy. That also means that they were able to contribute their phenomenal design skills to creating a whole new world for each episode.
As for other sci-fi movies that influenced the making of Space Dandy, they include Forbidden Planet and the original Tron and everything in between.
From musical and movie influences to the impact of working with great collaborators, Shinichiro Watanabe’s career has spanned twenty years of popular anime series. We look forward to the debut of Space Dandy and the future work of Director Watanabe.
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